


tenant

by oogenesis



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7926766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogenesis/pseuds/oogenesis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You need clothes," says Ryou, but doesn't move to go to get some from his room.  Maybe he's afraid that the king of thieves on his couch will wreak havoc while he's gone; or that he'll just disappear. </p><p>(or, Atem isn't the only one who gets a second chance at life.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	tenant

**Author's Note:**

> this is many months old and it's been sitting buried in my wips waiting for me to continue it but then i thought.....yknow what.......i'll just post it as is

Ryou gives him a mirror and the spirit - former spirit, once-ghost now made solid flesh - takes it.

The first thing he says, after a contemplative silence, is "Where's the scar?"

Ryou doesn't quite know, but he has a guess. "You were reborn, weren't you? This new body was never injured. You wouldn't have gotten the wound."

"Hmm. Pity. It made me look intimidating." He pokes at the flesh around his eyes where it used to be. "Maybe I'll make a new one."

Ryou wants to advise against that, but he doesn't think his words will have any effect. He is, after all, talking to the person who took a knife to their shared arm, plunged seven spikes into their chest, and more or less laughed it off. Not for the first time, he wonders if being dead gives a person a certain dismissive view of these vessels of meat and the ways they break and bleed.

Well, he can relate, after all; he's always taken a rather philosophical stance on these things. "You need clothes," says Ryou, but doesn't move to go to get some from his room. Maybe he's afraid that the king of thieves on his couch will wreak havoc while he's gone; or that he'll just disappear. 

"It can wait," says the thief. He's still looking in the mirror. "Been a long time since I had this face," he says. Then, "There weren't many mirrors back in Kemet."

(He seems vulnerable somehow; naked as the day he was born (and isn't that figure of speech appropriate?), new skin baby-soft and devoid of all calluses and scars, squinting into a mirror and poking at the flesh of his face as if it were someone else's. A wild, feral thing that has been stripped of all defenses and has slunk into the most familiar shelter that it could find - back to its landlord.)

He tugs at his hair. "Too short." Ryou doesn't reply, and the thief keeps going as if to fill up the silence. "I got used to having it long while I was your tenant. I'll probably grow it out again."

"You're sticking around, then?"

He looks away from the mirror for the first time and frowns at Ryou. "Why not? The _Pharaoh_ -" he spits out the word like blood - "is off enjoying all the pleasures of living, with his clear conscience and the company of his pretty little vessel. Why should I deny myself the same?"

"Don't hurt him." Ryou doesn't bother raising his voice yet.

"Yeah, yeah, I won't." The thief's face twists into a sneer. "Believe me, I'd love to wring his self-righteous little neck and send him back to the afterlife for good, but it's against the rules. Unfortunately."

The rules. Ryou makes a mental note to ask later.

"Don't hurt him in any other ways, either," he warns. "We both know there are ways to torment someone without physically hurting him. Don't do it."

The only reply is a contemptuous silence.

Ryou puts every ounce of quiet steel into his voice that he has within him, and says, "I won't let you hurt my friends."

There's a flash of recognition in those eyes. Ryou knows that the words are bringing to mind a body that wouldn't obey its new tenant, a hand that fought back, the same words written out on a computer screen. And then the spirit had lost. 

"I don't know how you came back," he continues, "or what exactly you are now, but you were dead and now you aren't, which means you're not entirely a living human anymore. And I know how to keep those kinds of things from hurting people."

The once-spirit throws him a piercing, calculating look. No doubt he is remembering the things he's seen in Ryou's room through Ryou's eyes; the charms and amulets, salt and herbs and strips of paper with kanji and hieroglyphs alike bleeding their spells into each other. Slowly, grudgingly, he says, "All right."

"Good." Ryou exhales, smiles, tries to let the fearful tension out of his neck. "This way there won't be any more trouble."


End file.
